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“The Texas Land Commissioner [GLO] was in Rockport Thursday morning to present the keys to a FEMA manufactured housing unit to a couple who lost everything to Hurricane Harvey,” said South Texas’ KIII News.

The GLO commissioner is George P. Bush, son of previous Florida Governor and one-time GOP presidential candidate, Jeb Bush.

“Not only did Rene and Bo Carettini lose their home to Hurricane Harvey, their 26-year-old autistic son had to move away with relatives because of it; but now, with their new FEMA manufactured house, they said their life is getting back on track,” according to that local media.

“There was nothing salvageable about it,” Rene said in that report. “It actually looked like a giant came along and picked it up, crushed it together, balled it up, and set it back down.” The move allowed the couple to leave their ‘tiny’ RV.

The FEMA MHU will allow their son to rejoin the family.

The couple in the video shown reflects their pleasure and relief at receiving the manufactured home. As Daily Business News readers know, thousands in Texas were impacted by Hurricane Harvey, and FEMA as well as private companies are an important part of the relief effort for those citizens.

Bush’s entourage included federal, state, and local officials, to congratulate the Carettini’s and reassure other residents that housing help is coming.

According to the report, “Texas General Land Office [GLO], 660 manufactured homes have been distributed statewide, with 70 in Aransas County and 25 in the Rockport area. So far, 26 residents have been given keys to homes, and nine more families will get their keys in the next week.”

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Submitted by Soheyla Kovach to the Daily Business News for MHProNews.com.
Soheyla is a managing member and co-founder of LifeStyle Factory Homes, LLC the parent company to MHProNews and MHLivingNews.

“Tony, every week there is so much that happens, this[The Sunday Morning Headline News Recap] is an easy way for me to review the news, thank you for this [feature]and your team’s coverage of factory-built housing.”

Our featured articles for September are available on the MHProNews.comhome page.

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Manufactured, modular and prefabricated home professionals know that how a home got to its location should not define a person or their dwelling.

What the Daily Business News spotlights day-by-day are the tragedies, triumphs and struggles for acceptance of the obvious solution for millions for the growing affordable housing crisis in the U.S. and beyond.

That’s $36,000 plus shipping. While HUD Code homes are still a better cost per square foot, will growing demand reduce the price of such competitors? Isn’t that the lesson of production – more demand, more production, costs decline – with all products?

Terminology error “trailer” is in the original posted on the Keynoter and Miami Herald websites.

The subject was hurricane recovery efforts.

The market potential is in the billions of dollars.

The Miami Herald and the Florida Keys News (Keynoter) both carried recent stories about the Plexos Group’s meeting with Marathon, FL county commissioners.

“They[Plexos Group] just wanted to come in and show it off as an alternative to trailers and mobile homes” typically used for temporary housing after emergencies, County Administrator Roman Gastesi told commissioners,” reported senior writer, Kevin Wadlow.

The Plexos Group website boasts that their firm has a century of experience managing over 25 billion dollars-worth of post disaster relief efforts. Working with local, state, and federal officials, Plexos stated that their experience – quoting their bullets – includes:

“We don’t know” if the Federal Emergency Management Agency would approve funding for the “cartridge technology” houses, Gastesi said, “but it’s kind of a neat idea,” per the Miami Herald.

“Plexos Senior Vice President Kirk Fisher said the design for the houses was drawn after Hurricane Katrina struck Louisiana and Mississippi in August 2005, displacing an estimated 400,000 people,” stated Wadlow.

“The cramped but liveable pop-up homes could be built and occupied for about $60,000, he said, and would be cheaper and more resilient to weather than manufactured trailers[sic],” Wadlow opined in his narration.

“It could be a temporary solution to a housing shortage, or even a permanent solution” in some situations,” per Plexos Group’s Fisher.

As MHProNews has previously reported, there are both domestic and international operations that are targeting the U.S. market, and hurricane relief is just one of those opportunities they are pursuing.

Wadlow cites a mainstream media source in Louisiana that said last December that, “FEMA estimated that it pays a unit rate of $62,500 for average cost of a mobile home [sic], and another $23,000 for installation, and then $15,400 for maintenance.”

FEMA Manufactured Housing Units (MHUs), like those shown above, have been deployed in numerous states over a period of several years. They are more than double the square footage of the Plexos Group prefabs shown.

The Daily Business News, first covered that concern for the HUD Code portion of the factory built home industry via the news report, linked here.

“Trailers [sic] occupied for several months typically are sold off,” stated the Keynoter, adding that “Many small trailers used after Hurricane Katrina were faulted for containing potentially hazardous materials. Current FEMA trailers [sic] must be built to higher environmental standards.”

In a Masthead column, MHProNews also spotlighted the ways that FEMA and Manufactured Housing Units (MHUs) could become a costly headache for the industry and its independents, see that report, linked here. ## (News, analysis.)

(Image credits are as shown above, and when provided by third parties, are shared under fair use guidelines.)

Submitted by Soheyla Kovach to the Daily Business News for MHProNews.com.

(Note:See Soheyla Kovach recent op-ed, linked here. Soheyla is a co-founder of LifeStyle Factory Homes, LLC – the parent to MHProNews.com and MHLivingNews.com – and is a managing member.)